Winner #1: Beta List

I signed up using my AdProof Twitter account and was off to the races. I started reading through the instructions and noticed this text:

“Please note at this time we only accept startups that are not yet publicly accessible. Feel free to submit anyway so we have your info on file for the future. Full details here.”

Crap!!! I need beta users, like yesterday, and this is not helping. I dragged along and then stumbled on a free pass for $15. The pass guarantees publication within 48 hours (only took me a few hours). Here’s the short story. It cost me $15, yielded 200 beta users, and took less than 24 hours. W00T!

Results: Currently about 200 sign ups.

Protip #1

In all my startup experience I’ve found it extremely vital to achieve small wins every day. If you’re not winning, you’re losing and that’s not healthy for the psyche. This was my small win that day.

What did I learn here? Reach out to awesome startup bloggers, like @Francov88, on Twitter or email and make it super personal. If they email you first then be sure to respond back within 10 minutes. The goal here is stay fresh in their mind while keeping it super personal.

Results: Currently about 30 sign ups.

Protip #2

Protip: If you’re not monitoring your brand terms with Google Alerts and IFTTT (If This, Then That) then do that now. I’m currently monitoring my brand terms with Google Alerts using this query:

-site:adproof.com “adproof”

-site:adproof.com adproof

Ive setup a recipe for each Google Alert, using the RSS feed, inside IFTTT to SMS me. Here’s my recipe if you need: AdProof IFTTT Google Alert Recipe. Remember to update the title and change the URL to your own Google Alert RSS URL.

Winner #3: Startup List

I gotta say, Startup List has got their crap together. Not only can you submit your awesome startup, you can also manage it inside a pretty dashboard. This is a great idea because startups change, ummm, frequently. So if your startup updates the homepage, or you want to tidy up your description, or add a video or even a new social media username, then you can do that here. My initial submission didn’t get the response necessary to make the homepage, but a quick email to the helpful @thenickfrost fixed all that. Friendly group of guys over there. High recommend.

Results: Currently about 20 sign ups.

The Bad and Ugly

I stumbled on a few other sites to submit your startup, but they’re all stuck in ‘pending’. I think these sites have potential, but are super duper slow in their moderation process.

MoMB or The Museum of Modern Betas - This site appeared to be active during the time, but now I’m not thinking so much. I sent an email to the author, via the footer, but didn’t get a response.

Don’t Miss Next Post

Stay tuned. You won’t want to miss the next blog post. I’m going to show you what worked and what didn’t when I applied advertising tactics to get beta users. I’ll show you what worked and what failed miserably. I’ll show you how I sent over 250 users from Facebook Ads in less than 5 minutes for $10. Yes, I used AdProof. Which reminds me… are you signed up for our private beta, yet? We’re closing the private beta once we reach 1,000.

Sharing is Caring Blah, Blah, Blah

If you enjoyed this post then share it or else… just kidding. No, seriously, please share the post. Thanks ;-)

Need Help?

I learned a ton about getting beta users with this exercise. So if you need any tips, please shoot a tweet to @jonathannelson and I promise to respond.